I had to go to work today so I missed the scavenger hunt. Poo.
When I got out, I went to Clover Park down the street from work to join them for the fooding and birthday song singing. The barbecue was delicious. The birthday song was off key. It was awesome. Happy birthday, Dennis! :)
For my lunch hour, I wanted to go to the Santa Monica Pier to take pictures for Flickr 888 group pool so off I went with 4 of my coworkers. Unfortunately, I got nothing spectacular. :\ And I found out how hot the sand can get on the bare feet. Ouch! >_<
After walking around the Santa Monica Pier, we decided to leave. I bought a star map. >.> It had crimes commited by or involved famous stars. Such a waste of money. :x
As we were leaving the parking lot, a very dumb woman went the wrong way. It took her a minute to figure out that she was going the wrong way. And it also took her a few more minutes to back out. It also didn’t help that there was another driver that got behind the first driver. I honked a few times in an effort to let the 2nd driver know that he’s going the wrong way. It took him a minute to figure out that he was going the wrong way as well… As the first driver was trying to get out, she scraped into the wall. I don’t think she knew how to drive her car backwards. Those types of people shouldn’t be driving. If you can’t read signs, don’t drive. If you can’t drive backwards, don’t drive. So simple.
Tomorrow is 888, or August 8, 2008. It’s Flickr 888! It’s also the first day of the Beijing Olympics.
I brushed Sen. I think I could have created another rabbit with the amount of fur I pulled from her, and she still has a lot left over to shed. As I was brushing her, I thought, too bad I can’t use this fur to make a paint brush… :x
Since I missed out on the bon odori at the Nishi Hongwanji obon, I decided to watch the one at the Gardena Buddhist Church today. Originally, Laura was going, but she decided to stay home and rest since she twisted her ankle while running. Franklin went with me instead since he didn’t want me to going by myself. What a nice friend. :)
For food, I was hoping for takoyaki and okonomiyaki, but instead there was chili rice and spam musubi. >.>; I guess the people who normally go to this buddhist temple are farther removed from Japan than the ones that go to Nishi Hongwanji. I ended up eating a spam musubi and teriyaki chicken bowl. Spam musubi was okay, the chicken teriyaki bowl was okay. I would have preferred okonomiyaki. Buu. :x
At 6 PM, the bon odori started. I wanted to dance, too, but I didn’t know how. I figured this time I’ll watch, and next year I’ll dance. Watching was good enough for me. O-sore!
I finally got around to watching Click with Adam Sandler. It was a decent movie. Pretty predictable as to where it was going, but it’s one of those movies where it tries to remind people to enjoy life and not work so much… Ironic, since I’m going to work and skipping out on the OC Fair…
Tickets have been purchased. TGS on Thursday, Friday, maybe Saturday and Sunday. Hakone for a day or two to visit Yunessun. They have a coffee bath now (my dad said I have bad taste). Then I’m gonna wander around Japan. Maybe go to Hiroshima. Maybe visit Nara and Kyoto again.
I want to go to Hokkaido to get salmon soft serve ice cream, but it’d take me 2 days to just get there. Four days total spent sitting on a train. I’m not sure I want to do that. It’d be funny though. “I came all the way from the US to try your ice cream!” >.>;; Baka ka?!
So on Saturday, July 26, I woke up really early to get ready and pick up my sister and Jyun. I was a bit late, but that’s okay, because I accounted someone being late into my time table. I was hoping it wasn’t going to be me… >.>;;
Everything goes smoothly at Union Station as Laura and Jyun were able to get their tickets relatively quickly since it was before 7 AM. The exciting part was when I found out that the Heroes cast was at Union Station, not more than 30 feet from me. The crappy part was when I found out that I left my SLR camera battery at home when my sister asked, “How do I turn this on?” Crap. Jyun had a camera, and I had a point and shoot, so I did get non-stalker pictures of them from that.
Ride to San Diego was uneventful. We got seats and that’s all that mattered. :P Although, my sister did say that I brushed past 2 of the Heroes cast on my way back from the cafe train. Peter Petrelli and Mohinder Suresh. And I didn’t even realize I did. Gah!
When Laura and I got the SDCC, we went to get in line for the Heroes panel, but unfortunately it was full. :( No Heroes for me. So we wandered around the exhibit hall. Laura got bored of standing at the Square-Enix booth with my friends and wandered off, eventually getting herself into whichever hall that had the Battlestar Galactica panel 2 hours ahead of schedule. She wanted to make sure she had a seat. During that time I ate food at Anthony’s with my friends. It was okay food. There was a piece of bread in the butter, veeery suspicious.
The hotel I stayed at was the Sofia Hotel. Very nice. A bit pricey, but I love the decor.
For dinner, Laura and I couldn’t decide on what to eat. So we decided to wander around until we found something to both our liking. We rejected one or two places (mainly because they didn’t look like they were serving alcohol) until we ran into Shiz and Jyun. Shiz, Jyun, Steph, Michael, Laura and I ate at an Indian restaurant. It was pretty good. Oh yeah, I met Will Wheaton, but I didn’t recognize him because he had the entire facial hair thing going.
Sunday, Laura and I were planning on trying to get Cylon toasters, but we decided sleep was more important. At least that saved us $65. <.<;
At 2:30 PM, it was back to the train station to go back home. Train ride was uneventful as well. (Less so because the entire cast of Heroes wasn’t on the train….)
It’s really quite sad watching Wamu’s stocks. That’s where I keep my money. It closed at under $5 a share today. Overall, I’ve started watching the stock market. Mostly of ATVI stock, but now I’ve added more to my nifty Yahoo widget at work.
Speaking of ATVI stocks, I got a large envelope in the mail today about selling my stocks in the company back for $27 or something. It’s quite the confusing package. Personally, I don’t want to sell as I think the stocks are going to do well with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 on the horizon. I’ll read it anyways and make an attempt at understanding it’s complicated lingo.
This weekend started off rather boring. On Saturday, I woke up, putted around the house before I took a shower. I putted around some more by playing with my camera and taking self-portraits. The FLCL poster in the background kinda ruined the shots. Note to self, I need to get rid of the FLCL poster on my wall before it falls and paper cuts all over my face in the middle of the night.
After all that fun, I hopped into my car to go to work. On the weekend. It was actually a good thing that I went because there were some problems that cropped up that I would have had to work on today, so I got a head start on that.
At 8:30 PM, I left work to go down to Cabrillo Beach to catch some fish. Except there really weren’t any fish to catch. There were a lot of people on the beach pointing their flashlights left and right into the water, scaring the grunion away. :\ The grunion run turned into a midnight beach picnic instead. I kinda was looking forward to eating a grunion, but alas, nope. Maybe during the next run I’ll be able to take some home to eat.
Sunday, I met up with Shiz and Dee for the natsu matsuri at Mitsuwa in Torrance. They had takoyaki 6 pieces for $4! Cheap! The octopus pieces were generous, too. What a good deal! Of course, the yakisoba was kinda meatless… Jyun showed up and finished off the takoyaki Shiz was saving for him. It was the standard Mitsuwa summer festival of the years past. I wanted to wear a yukata, but I was defeated by the thought of having to tie an obi (which I couldn’t remember and thus would have to look up on the interwebs) and having to slip on a pair of zouri on my feet. Wearing zouri hurts and my foot was hurting from the night before standing on the beach barefooted. I’m so babied with my cushiony flip-flops.
Managed to escape Mitsuwa without buying anything. Go me!
When I got home, I planted my tea bush I bought at the obon festival last week.
